News

Just two months after hundreds of UC Berkeley office assistants, childcare workers and library assistants walked off the job, the university’s clerical employees, locked in a bitter contract dispute with the university over wages and workplace safety, began a new round of voting Tuesday to authorize a second strike.
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City Council spared two popular programs from the chopping block Tuesday, including winter swimming at Willard Pool. But as officials dealt with city budget forecasts, they agreed that additional across-the-board cuts would be inevitable.
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HELENA, Mont. — A U.S. senator is demanding an explanation from the National Park Service for why it cut short the season of a Yellowstone National Park ranger who earlier was ordered to stop speaking out about unscrupulous hunters.
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OAKLAND – A significant budget gap is plaguing the Oakland Unified School District and county officials have appointed a fiscal advisor while they wait to find out just how much money is missing.
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SAN FRANCISCO – Immigration activists in 12 states are rallying and lobbying congressional representatives this week in an election-season effort to generate support for legalizing undocumented workers.
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SAN FRANCISCO – It was all smiles Tuesday at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting, where the sometimes contentious panel voted 11-0 to give the city’s Olympic bid a vital green light – three years ahead of schedule.
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SACRAMENTO – More of the fastest-growing businesses, as ranked by Inc. Magazine, are from California than from any other state, negating an impression the state’s business climate is too unfriendly, state officials said.
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SAN DIEGO – The trial of a former toxicologist accused of poisoning her husband began Tuesday with prosecutors using a series of passionate e-mails and a glass drug pipe to illustrate the twin obsessions they claim led her to commit murder: a torrid office affair and an addiction to methamphetamine.
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VOLCANO, Hawaii – Mauna Loa is stirring after an 18-year pause, and an eruption could be devastating to the neighborhoods built on the giant volcano’s slopes in the intervening years, scientists said Monday.
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WASHINGTON – Hikers, mountain climbers, hunters and others who could find themselves lost or hurt will have a new way to call for help: a handheld device that signals the same satellite rescue system that has watched over pilots and boaters for two decades.
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The University of California, pushing to conclude a year-old contract dispute with 18,000 secretaries, library assistants and childcare workers, has imposed an Oct. 31 deadline on the employees’ union to accept a two-year, 3.5 percent salary increase.
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SAN FRANCISCO – The San Francisco Giants have announced that tickets to possible World Series games between the Giants and Anaheim Angels at Pacific Bell Park will go on sale to the general public on Wednesday morning.
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A small group of union activists held a teach-in on the UC Berkeley campus Monday, supporting hundreds of lecturers and clerical employees striking at five other UC campuses over wages and job security.
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SAN RAFAEL — Marin County health officials and community groups soon will be polling residents as part of an effort to learn why the scenic, affluent region north of San Francisco is home to one of the nation’s highest rates of breast cancer.
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MARTINEZ — The Martinez Police Department says a man was placed in custody Monday after he went on an alleged crime spree that included robbing a house, crashing a stolen vehicle into a police car and attempted carjacking.
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SAN FRANCISCO — While the battle between Microsoft Corp. and the open-source software movement dominates headlines, another phenomenon is shaping the marketplace — at least for servers used by businesses.
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SAN DIEGO — Teams of security officers with the U.S. Coast Guard have surveyed a handful of ports nationwide to determine whether they are vulnerable to a terrorist attack, a newspaper reported Monday.
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DENISON, Iowa — Up to 11 badly decomposed bodies, possibly belonging to immigrants who were being smuggled into the country, were found in a Union Pacific rail car parked at a grain elevator outside of town, authorities said Monday.
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SAN FRANCISCO — More than 1,000 lecturers at five University of California campuses picketed Monday instead of teaching their classes as part of a two-day strike they hope will pressure the administration to compromise on contract issues.
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LOS ANGELES — A study of 80 men — 40 who saw combat in Vietnam and their twins who did not — suggests the size of a region of the brain involved in storing memories can predict one’s vulnerability to post-traumatic stress disorder.
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SACRAMENTO — With high-tech art and music studios, ballet and tap dance classes and a theater, the Natomas Performing and Fine Arts Academy in Sacramento looks more like a private university than a public school.
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PHILADELPHIA— Dom Spatano, who runs a deli in the Reading Terminal Market downtown, said Monday he has changed what he puts in his kids’ lunchboxes because of the biggest meat recall in U.S. history.
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PHILADELPHIA— Dom Spatano, who runs a deli in the Reading Terminal Market downtown, said Monday he has changed what he puts in his kids’ lunchboxes because of the biggest meat recall in U.S. history.
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If the opening hearing for 32 students who took over a UC Berkeley campus building is any indicator, the total bill for the remaining hearings will be at least $400,000, according to estimates by university officials.
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LOS ANGELES - The fifth-ranked Cal women’s soccer team lost its second straight game on Sunday, falling 2-0 to No. 15 USC. The Bears fell to 0-2 in Pac-10 play (7-4-1 overall) after losing, 1-0, to UCLA on Friday. The Trojans improved to 6-4-3 overall, 1-1 in the Pac-10.
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BALI, Indonesia — Terrified tourists tried Sunday to flee this island paradise that turned into an inferno, with the death toll from a pair of bombings climbing to 187 and fears growing that al-Qaida has taken its terror campaign to the world’s largest Muslim country.
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SAN FRANCISCO — Lately quite a few large food companies have gotten into the organic food market, giving California organic farmers, often the foes of large agriculture businesses, something of a shock.
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LOS ANGELES – Nearly one-fifth of the $64 million Gov. Gray Davis has raised for his re-election has been donated by people he appointed to state boards and commissions, according to a report published Sunday.
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While most of the United States will celebrate Columbus Day this Monday, Berkeley will remember the consequences of colonialism. For the past 10 years, the city has designated the Saturday nearest to Oct. 12 – the date Christopher Columbus arrived in America – as Indigenous Peoples Day. Today, more than 100 Native American groups will gather at Martin Luther King Jr. Park to dance, sing and remember.
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Berkeley is world renouned as a home of knowledge and learning. Our children deserve world-class schools that live up to Berkeley’s superb reputation. Our local school district does a good job with its limited resources. However, if we are serious about bringing a world-class education to every single child in Berkeley we need to make our schools a higher priority and enlist the help of the entire community as well as our county, state and federal officials.
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Ask any musician what kind of music his band plays. You’re likely to get “it’s hard to categorize” followed by some long dizzying string of styles like post-punk-rockabilly-surfer-metal. Even if resisting musical definitions weren’t de rigueur, most musical categories fall short in their attempt to help listeners navigate the CD bins of today’s music stores.
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FREDERICKSBURG, Va. — A man filling up his car at a Virginia gas station was shot to death Friday in what may have been the most brazen attack yet by the Washington-area sniper, committed as a state trooper investigated an accident just across the street.
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The reopening of West Coast ports brought little relief to the Ross Glove Co., which has 70,000 pairs of leather gloves stitched in the Philippines still stuck on a ship in the Long Beach, Calif., harbor.
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SACRAMENTO — Household International Inc., one of the nation’s largest lenders, will pay $484 million to settle illegal lending allegations by state attorneys general and state financial regulators, California officials said Thursday evening.
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It is said that our natural gravitation toward music comes from the first sounds we ever hear – the rhythmic beating of our mother’s heart. If this is true, world-renowned percussion master John Santos must have heard his mother’s heart beating loud and clear. Tonight, the founder and director of the critically acclaimed Machete Ensemble will take his band to the stage of La Pena Cultural Center. In collaboration with four Bay Area poets, the 10-piece group will perform a truly unique combination of Afro-Cuban music and spoken word.
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Bay Area activists took to the streets of San Francisco and Oakland Thursday evening to show their opposition to the House of Representatives’ 296-133 vote giving President Bush broad authority to use military force in Iraq.
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SAN FRANCISCO — A man with the environmental activist group Earth First! has died after a fall of more than 50 feet from a redwood tree, raising concerns about the dangers of tree sits, often used to stop logging operations.
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SACRAMENTO — A Northern California Indian tribe has declared a “state of emergency” over fish kills on the Klamath River, and asked Gov. Gray Davis to issue a similar declaration for the tribe’s reservation.
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Members of a gay and lesbian community center say they were shocked to find the find the word “Fag!” and a swastika scribbled on their outdoor bulletin board earlier this week, as reported in the Daily Planet Oct. 8.
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NEW YORK — Two executives who oversaw WorldCom’s financial record-keeping pleaded guilty Thursday to charges stemming from a federal probe of the company’s multibillion-dollar accounting scandal.
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A photography exhibit in downtown Berkeley, commissioned by the Alameda County Community Food Bank, will present startling images of the many faces of hunger throughout the month of October. The 40 photograph exhibit titled “Hunger: What Will You Do About It?” by Berkeley-based documentary photographer David Bacon, will be held at the Civic Center at 2180 Milvia St., and in the Police Review Commission lobby at 1900 Addison St.
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City Council took its first step Tuesday to ban smoking within 20 feet of any doorway or air intake vent on public buildings. Council unanimously passed the first reading of the anti-smoking ordinance.
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SAN JOSE — Convicted Yosemite murderer Cary Stayner should die for his crimes, a jury decided Wednesday, rejecting defense pleas to show him mercy because of a traumatic childhood, mental illness and an inability to control his urges.
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UC Berkeley lawyers agreed Wednesday to postpone student conduct hearings for 32 pro-Palestinian activists until the Alameda County Superior Court rules on a lawsuit filed by the students against the university.
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SAN FRANCISCO — A third mediation attempt to resolve the legal tug-of-war over San Francisco Giants’ star Barry Bonds’ 73rd home run ball failed Wednesday as both men claiming ownership of the historic shot could not reach a settlement.
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SAN JOSE – Colleges around the country are buying millions of coasters that test for “date-rape” drugs in drinks. But some experts say the coasters are ineffective and could lead to more assaults by creating a false sense of security.
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LOS ANGELES – The Bush administration weighed in Wednesday on the contentious battle over California’s efforts to clean its air, joining automakers in arguing a state mandate that seeks to curb tailpipe emissions is pre-empted by federal law.
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SAN FRANCISCO – A lawyer for the California Department of Transportation argued to a federal appeals court in San Francisco Wednesday that the agency has a constitutional right to allow private citizens to hang American flags but not other kinds of banners on freeway overpasses.
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LOS ANGELES (AP) — West Coast dockworkers headed back to work under court order Wednesday, facing a huge backlog of cargo that built up over 10 days but could take more than two months to clear.
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LOS ANGELES — A group that accused Gov. Gray Davis of illegal fund-raising retracted the allegation Wednesday as Republican opponent Bill Simon sought to contain political fallout from having turned the claim into a campaign issue.
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FREMONT – The Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office announced today that a Fremont couple has been charged with 22 felony counts in connection with an allegedly fraudulent contracting company they owned and operated.
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Opinion

Editorials

BISMARCK, N.D. — Duck hunters in two boats died in separate accidents after their vessels capsized or sank in choppy North Dakota lakes. Three bodies were recovered by Tuesday as divers continued searching for a fourth man.
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